The new iPhone wasn’t the only hot thing on sale on Friday. At this point it may take a miracle to score coveted “Book of Mormon” tickets.

Tickets sold out within 90 minutes of the 10 a.m. release for the hotly anticipated San Francisco run of the insanely popular Broadway musical from the creators of “South Park.” An outrageous satire of religion devised by the devilish and witty Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the Tony winner runs Nov. 27-Dec. 30 at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco.

However, legions of devout Bay Area theater fans can take comfort in the fact that the musical will have a limited number of tickets available through a daily lottery. Exactly how the lottery will work was not disclosed by presenter SHN. Call 888-746-1799 or go to www.shnsf.com.

Seats also vanished quickly during the launch of the national touring production in Denver, where Parker and Stone grew up. And the blockbuster show remains a hot ticket on Broadway, where seats are hard to come by, although they often set you back as much as $500.

“The show does more than just poke fun at religion,” says hard-core fan Darren Kevin Velasco. “It takes you on an unexpected journey with music that is absolutely extraordinary.”

Velasco was among the blessed today. The Santa Clara University student couldn’t believe his luck landing the holy grail of theater tickets.

“I got the wretched Row M corner balcony seat, but who am I to complain?” he gushed. “Christmas came early.”

Many of those scrambling for seats during today’s online frenzy had seen the show before, sometimes more than a dozen times.

Leanna Yip, a copy editor from New York, snapped up tickets so she could see the show with family who live in San Francisco. Although she has seen the musical many times before, she said she would not part with the tickets for any amount of money.

Indeed, she was so elated today, she had “heart palpitations.”

“I just love it,” she said. It’s “smart, funny, well-executed.”

San Francisco playwright Marisela Treviño Orta was not among the chosen. Though she tried to land seats both during the earlier American Express pre-sale and today’s release, she still came up empty-handed.

“I have to say trying to buy tickets was like some sort of bad joke,” she said. The “entire experience was exercise in futility.”

“Book of Mormon” has been a pop culture juggernaut since it opened on Broadway in March 2011. An R-rated lampoon of two bumbling but lovable Mormon missionaries in Uganda, the musical almost instantly captured the zeitgeist. The tuner nabbed nine Tony Awards, including best musical, best score and best book. Critics from New York to Los Angeles have hailed it as a “heavenly” night of theater.

For the record, it’s not just theater buffs who have embraced the megahit. “Book of Mormon” has been the first theatrical experience for many fans of “South Park” who had never imagined that Broadway could be so raunchy and irreverent.

Even the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is vigorously spoofed in the musical, has gotten into the act. The Mormon church has taken out several ads in programs for the musical suggesting fans of the piece check out the original book because “the book is always better.”

Velasco, for one, is not all surprised by the furor the musical has caused, even among the college crowd.

“If any musical can bring in a new audience,” he said, “it would be ‘The Book of Mormon.’ “

Karen D'Souza is the theater critic for the Mercury News and the Bay Area News Group papers. She is a three-time Pulitzer juror, a former USC/Getty Arts Journalism Fellow and a longtime member of the Glickman Drama Jury and the American Theatre Critics Association. She has a Master's Degree in Journalism from UC Berkeley. She is a Twitter addict (@KarenDSouza4), a fangirl and a mommy and her writings have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle and American Theatre Magazine.

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